


heron flight, thrush song

by chuchisushi



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Aftermath of a Case, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Force-Sensitive Chirrut Îmwe, M/M, Pre-Canon, Relationship Study, Unreliable Narrator, semiferal chirrut, tangentially sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 06:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10588608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi
Summary: Chirrut's path lies true in the cadence of his feet upon the way, in the throb of Baze's pulse.Or: after a mission goes wrong, Chirrut endeavors to survive.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iwritesometimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwritesometimes/gifts).



> this started off as an attempt to fill prompts 2 [* Late teenage/young adult Guardians on a mission of some kind (off-world? on the other side of the moon? anything is good!), Chirrut is captured, Baze has to bust him out. After this could be RELIEVED/HAPPY MAKEOUTS AND/OR SEX AFTERWARD?? Whatever feels right!] and 3 [* Something to do with Baze and Chirrut learning or knowing each other's languages; maybe in the context of a conversation with Bodhi, and they all speak a different dialect of Jedhan?] of the given and, as in many attempts to write chirrut, completely derailed itself and ended up in this strange liminal space of being an examination of chirrut and baze's relationship. My apologies :"|
> 
> many thanks as always go to my beta, who hauled ass to get this done

“You are never,” Chirrut pants, “to do that again. Ever. You hear me? Never.”

He huffs out a breath as he pauses midstep to heft Baze’s weight higher up, shifting his grip on his staff where it’s held at the small of his back, parallel to the ground. Baze has been awkwardly perched upon the uneti wood’s span, his weight broad warmth against Chirrut’s spine and shoulders, his occasional exhale catching on Chirrut’s hair or ear, but the reminders of his presence are a small comfort. Baze is still alive. They have to survive.

Chirrut navigates their surroundings slowly, carefully, without the use of his staff or Baze’s eyes; he relies on his echobox instead and barely begrudges the mild headache he’s nursing from focusing so hard. Baze’s weight is a solid thing against his back, and Chirrut is careful in a way he rarely is in NiJedha for the sake of both himself and what he carries.

It was _supposed_ to be routine. An ordinary journey, meant to catalog if the other kyber caves that the Temple knew of, if the locations guarded by other branches of their order still stood intact. NiJedha’s roots grew entwined with the largest deposit of kyber on the moon, but this did not mean it was the only one. There were other places in which the crystal pushed close to the surface, places that sprouted cities or fortresses and Guardians alike in the years after for the way power called to power, for the lethal use implied in the facets that whispered to those attuned enough with the Force. It was _supposed_ to be routine – just a check upon one of the most outer-flung branches of their order, to see if they had initiates skilled enough to study at NiJedha’s Temple, to see if they wanted for anything NiJedha could give, and instead…

Chirrut remembers the scent of ash and blaster burns, the urgent thrum of the kyber deposit in his veins, the brief warning he’d sensed in the part of him that listened to the Force, before Baze had drawn in a sharp breath between his teeth as they’d topped the ridge they had been climbing. “Baze, what – ?” Chirrut had started, before Baze had seized his hand and yanked him unceremoniously, urgently, into a run. Chirrut had barely stumbled when his lightbow had slammed painfully into the backs of his thighs.

“It’s gone.” Baze had gritted out. “The village is gone. The Temple is overrun.” In the distance, Chirrut had heard the sound of a siren crackling into life, the shouts of people mobilizing, the roar of speeder engines coaxed into life. Baze had cursed once, short, sharp.

“The _entire_ – bandits? Raiders? Enough of them to – ” and then Chirrut had bitten himself off and bent his head to run faster, because Baze’s hand had tightened on his hard enough to hurt, and that had been enough answer on its own.

Chirrut remembers the sound of rifle fire, the dull smacking bark of a sniper’s gun as energy splashed and splattered against the stone about them. He remembers the sick jerk in their pace and the small noise Baze had made when he’d been hit, the way Chirrut had felt the Force bend to the other man as his conviction, as his armor, even as Baze had drawn upon his training to keep running. He remembers the sound of reverberating, an echobox map of shapes that rang hollow in spaces, enough so, perhaps, for one to hide – but not two – and he remembers Baze’s labored breath as he’d fought to get them to safety. Remembers the roar of speeders getting closer.

He remembers letting go of Baze’s hand, of shoving him away, of shouting _go_ in Baze’s native tongue, the word slippery on his lips. He remembers repeating himself, teeth bared, of kicking off his boots and darting for one of the ravine walls, of pretending like he hadn’t felt the fleeting catch of Baze’s fingers almost grabbing his sleeve. Remembers starting to climb and of the moment Baze had realized what he intended to do, and of the way Baze had choked out his name, once, throat ragged, before turning his face away.

Separate, they could maybe survive. Tuck themselves away in some little hole to wait out the hunt, regroup after. Together, they would surely be taken, and Chirrut remembers thinking that he will have to apologize to Baze, later, for forcing the choice upon him when Baze was the poorer climber of them two.

He is caught. Baze is not.

Chirrut remembers rough hands and angry voices when he comes to from the blaster fire that had picked him off the cliff wall, the way he’d retched all over the back of the speeder and the lap of the bandit holding him on and the dark satisfaction he’d felt at the resulting curse, even if it had earned him a slap that had made his tender head spin.

They had taken him as ransom and to work the kyber into focus crystals for weapons, and Chirrut had almost laughed in their faces when he’d realized, because they could not have chosen a poorer mark. He had told them as much in his home tongue, teeth bared and grinning, and gotten another slap for his trouble and insolent tone. Had pretended to be cowed, after, when cruel hands had dug into the burn splashed knotting across his right shoulder through the bandages and bacta.

He had tried to not worry about Baze. Had counted, instead, the number of distinct voices with his head bowed, learned their patterns of movement and the weaknesses their bodies couldn’t hide. The man who walked with a limp. The being that sucked at its rotting teeth. The woman whose arm had been broken badly and set even worse, who didn’t have its full range of motion. He had waited. Waited and learned, patient, and curled his toes in the dust on the lost Temple’s floor and murmured to the kyber that thrummed in his hands (perhaps he only imagines the formless whispers he hears in reply.)

They had underestimated him. Of course they had, because Chirrut had been careful to display only enough spitfire to mock instead of threaten, had pretended to be blinder and clumsier than he was. They had left him his staff and echobox, and they had not restrained him, and Chirrut would have laughed for how easily they had made themselves targets if not for the worry that chews into his guts over Baze. He had not known how badly the other had been hurt. Knew that there were only so many medical supplies in their packs, because this had been intended as an easy journey, a simple task.

Chirrut had waited and when there had been a commotion at the center of the bandit camp, the speeders and their fuel rods going up in a conflagration of fire and force, Chirrut had waited even more. Waited for the bandits to send out men, waited for rifle fire and the responding thrum of a lightbow aimed true, because Baze wore the honor of his marksmans sights proudly. Chirrut had waited for Baze to pick the gunmen off, for the bandits to regroup within the lost Temple’s ruins, for them to huddle, fearful and anticipatory, waiting for outward threats, to _move_.

They had underestimated him as danger. Chirrut had taken ruthless advantage, left those felled red like the linings of his robes in his wake.

And after, after, Chirrut had rushed out into the gloom with his staff held high, waved it in circles to signal Baze, wherever he was, that he was alright. Baze had scolded him (of course) for being reckless, for making such a choice, and Chirrut had apologized with his arms about the other for doing so – because even if it had been for the best, even if it had been for their survival, Chirrut had spent the past long days with his chest in knots around the thought of whether or not Baze was alive.

They had dressed their wounds with their supplies and what they could pilfer from the bandits. Baze had cursed over a comm panel that had hissed and spit sparks at him until he’d wrestled it into submission, used it to send off a brief report to NiJedha’s Temple about what had occurred. Chirrut had caught him when he’d sagged, after, murmured soft words to Baze as he’d felt the strength drain from those limbs underneath his hands.

“You pushed yourself too hard, Baze,” Chirrut had chided him. “Patience would have spared you this,” and Baze’s retort bleeds out of Standard into the tumbled stones of his native tongue, voice rolling over and against itself until it peters into silence.

Chirrut retraces their steps. The speeders had all been destroyed, and there is nothing left for them in the ruins of what had been lost. Their fight will only have drawn attention, and Chirrut is sure that the bandits they had faced were not the entirety of the force it would have taken to overrun the defenses of the village and Temple. There will be scavengers to pick the bodies of what remained, and it will not do either he or Baze any good to be caught in between. Chirrut pulls Baze onto his back, gathers their things, and then turns his face to where they’d come.

It takes him a day to realize Baze had fallen into fever, his body burning his reserves to combat the ugly, wet flush that has taken hold in Baze’s wound. Chirrut berates him even as he tears strips off of the red lining of his robes, folds one up into a pad that he wets with their water, tying it to Baze’s brow with the other, careful around the tangled braids Chirrut hadn’t yet found the time to tidy. He uses zawa-shimo sparingly, relies upon his natural bounds of endurance instead. He will not falter before he is assured of Baze’s safety. He refuses to.

It had been five long days at peak strength to come to the village and Temple now long-lost in the dust and dirt and fine-grained sand of the road that is stuck to Chirrut’s bare toes. It will take longer for one Guardian, overburdened, to make his way back to the town that had been their last stopping point, before. Chirrut will do it. Of course he will. Of course.

He trusts to the Force and the memories of where they had walked and the road to guide his way; he relies on his own intuition to track as much of their journey as he can over bare stone or cool grit that will soon shift obscuring in the brutal Jedha wind. He walks with Baze a heavy, warm weight along his back, his hands clasped tight about his staff, utterly silent save for the moments in which his worry wins out, in which he has to speak to berate Baze for the length of several steps. (They are empty words, but he is sure Baze would forgive him them anyway, if he had been enough awake to have heard.)

At night, Chirrut finds or sets up shelter, fingers curled careful around the collapsible supports of their tent, sweeping the ground or stone with his bare feet while sniffing, to make sure of the abandoned nature of these spaces. He eats the dense blocks of sweet grain prepared for their travels, picks out the dried fruits and nuts studded within, takes a careful knife to hydrocapsules of pressured water to empty their contents into their camping pot, reallocates as necessary to fill their canteens. He pops the fruit and nuts into his mouth, drinks, chews, and then bends where he sits to where Baze lies propped up in his lap to coax the other’s lips, mouth, open. Rests his forehead against Baze’s after, and closes his eyes to just breathe.

Baze is laid out on furs, beneath a foil blanket that crinkles underneath Chirrut’s touch, that he hates for the noise and texture of it, but Chirrut sets aside his grudge against the thing for now for how it keeps Baze warm. Chirrut changes the dressings on the other’s wound, peels the steel off of a can of solid, smokeless fuel, and sets it alight with flint striking off of the lid. He measures millet and sweetgrain with the cup of a palm, breaks apart wind-dried, salted meat with teeth and fingers, fibers splintering, snapping, underneath the tug of his head and neck, and cooks porridge with the water left in the pot, set over the low flame. He feeds Baze as much as the other will eat when roused, finishes the rest himself, and dozes with his feet centered underneath himself, with one hand clenched around his staff, ready, and the other pressed gently, his split, scabbed knuckles and all, to the hollow of Baze’s throat to count the thrum of his pulse. He does not call Baze’s name even in the smallest hours of the nights, because Baze shifts and stirs at it each time as though he means to wake, and Baze needs the rest. Chirrut loves him too much to speak, so he won’t. He doesn’t.

In the morning, Chirrut gives him more fruit and nuts and water, or porridge if there is any left, scours their cookware in sand, takes the tent down around them or gathers their things, threading his staff on the bundles or hanging them from his front. He wraps Baze up in the furs after folding away the foil blanket, tucking it between the layers of his Guardian robes so it is warm for Baze when night falls, and bends to heft him onto himself, his staff held crosswise for the (beloved) burden of Baze’s weight that settles, solid, against Chirrut’s spine and shoulders.

Chirrut walks, careful in a way he rarely is within NiJedha’s walls for the sake of both himself and what he carries, and on the fifth day Baze’s fever breaks.

“Chirrut,” Baze groans, and the breath of it sweeps across Chirrut’s hair, against the nape of his neck and the slope of a shoulder; Chirrut stops in his tracks, his heart in his throat for whether or not Baze had called his name in a fever dream, if he…

“Chirrut,” Baze rasps, again, followed by a series of words in a complaining tone all groaned in Baze’s mother tongue, the ends of each syllable blurring into the next. “Where are we?” is what finally emerges in Standard, and Chirrut blows out a great breath and tips his head back towards the sky.

“ _Baze_ ,” Chirrut chokes out, and Baze makes a soft, tired noise in reply.

“I was ill.”

“Yes.”

“We’re – ?”

“Maybe two, three days away from town.”

Baze hums and his weight shifts slightly. “Yes.” He stills, and then Chirrut feels the press of Baze’s palms against his back.

“I had to,” Baze tells him, voice a dull burr against Chirrut’s skin, his hair. “I wasn’t going to leave you there. I couldn't.”

Chirrut calls him an idiot in a language all vowels and indignation, and Baze chuckles weakly against him because this is one of the few words of Chirrut’s he knows, laughs even as Chirrut stomps into motion once more.

“Go back to sleep,” Chirrut snaps at him (but there is no heat nor edges to what he says, just tenderness and a relief he cannot hide), and Baze shifts to press lips against his neck before he settles all solid, warm weight once more.

That evening Chirrut sits with Baze wrapped in furs and foil, with his head in Chirrut’s lap and his eyes half open. He blinks up at Chirrut, sluggish, sweet, lashes light against Chirrut’s palm, and Chirrut feels something that had been howling furious in the hollows of his chest these past long nights and days finally settle back into silence.

“Never do that again, Baze,” Chirrut tells him gravely, sternly, serious like he rarely is, and Baze says nothing in response because they both know it is a promise and desire he cannot make, cannot keep. Baze lifts his hands to Chirrut’s face instead, the motion precluded by the shift of his weight and the crinkle of the blanket, and Chirrut bends forward to accept the way Baze holds his jaw and cheeks in his palms. Accepts the way that Baze tugs him down to him to reach, and Chirrut goes like bowing, folding himself down small to fit.

Baze presses his lips below each eye, upon the brow, and Chirrut breathes out with it. “Chirrut,” Baze hums, and then kisses him upon the lips, and Chirrut cannot help but surge into it, cannot help _himself_ , snarls against this catch of tender skin on skin, a whine bubbling up in the back of his throat as he bares his teeth into the intimacy and _bites_. He tastes Baze’s blood on his tongue.

“Chirrut,” Baze says again, and this time Chirrut lets his lids fall closed, smears his wet mouth against the crease of Baze’s own and the slope of his chin. His voice spills from him in glass and kyber shards and fine-grained sand that wears the space Baze occupies in his head, liver, belly, down smooth. Baze will never know these words, and, in truth, they barely made sense even to Chirrut, are the litany of a babbling fool all vows of fealty and pride and violence, all savage devotion that houses quivering crimson cores that beat. “ _Baze_ ,” Chirrut gasps, and “Baze,” he repeats, pleading, all those long nights of silence broken now by the way Baze’s name spills over and over again from Chirrut’s lips, devastation dragging his tone down into rubble, ruins.

Baze holds the hands that have fisted upon his chest. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m here.”

Chirrut clutches them close in return and holds his breath with his eyes screwed shut tight tight tight and, in that moment, feels the universe wheel about them, merciless and vast and _beautiful_.

“I’m here. I’m here. I promise. I’m here.”


End file.
